ok, now good news (sorta) for long long long waiting buyers from other 26 countries: retail date moved from 31 August to 28 August (well, it IS still earlier, right......)

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Now this is interesting. With the i7 coming out Aug 1, do I return the i5 and go with i7? I will still be within the 45 day return period at Best Buy. Rats!!! Once again, do I really need an i7 or is it just envy.

Now this is interesting. With the i7 coming out Aug 1, do I return the i5 and go with i7? I will still be within the 45 day return period at Best Buy. Rats!!! Once again, do I really need an i7 or is it just envy.

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Same problem here. Is the price difference really worth it? How much more performance will we get between the i5 and i7?

Now this is interesting. With the i7 coming out Aug 1, do I return the i5 and go with i7? I will still be within the 45 day return period at Best Buy. Rats!!! Once again, do I really need an i7 or is it just envy.

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Unless the i7 has some kind of upgraded cooling, I don't think the i7 can run faster than the i5 except for very small periods of time.

Unless the i7 has some kind of upgraded cooling, I don't think the i7 can run faster than the i5 except for very small periods of time.

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I'm very curious about this as well. I am actually shocked that I didn't buy an i5 day one due to my personal nature of tech lust. Frankly, I just love my SP2 and didn't fall all over myself with the new one. I thought I'd wait till the fall or Christmas. But, after visiting this forum repeatedly, I suppose my delay is now a concern due to some of the valid performance issues expressed by this community related to heat and throttling. How in the world could the i7 out perform the i5 if once a heavy load is consistently underway unless radical cooling updates take place?

I am not throwing stones here. I genuinely want to know. Is there a new CPU later in the year that is different or is the next release of i7 uniquely different?

Some key points listed:
• Intel claims the Core M chips will take up half the space of its predecessors, offer up to a 40 per cent performance improvement and use 60 percent less heat. This also allows them to be fanless.
• Broadwell will provide a 30% power reduction over the previous generation chip
• Existing Windows 8 devices average between 6-to-8 hours on a single charge and they could finally crack the 10-hour barrier with Broadwell.

This sounds like what I would want in the SP3, but I want to see how things unfold over the next few weeks with the improvements in firmware or drivers that may further improve mid-term results under heavy usage. From the way things are reading on this forum, while taxing the SP3 - it starts fast, gets hot, throttles back, and until it cools suffers in performance.